


Let's Play For A While

by casey270



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), Tommy Ratliff (Musician)
Genre: Attacked By A Creature, Dark, Gen, Hallucinations, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Unspecified creatures, telepathic trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 12:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3447797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casey270/pseuds/casey270
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the <a href="http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/">Hurt/Comfort</a> February amnesty challenge. </p><p>My prompts were Attacked by a creature, Humiliation, Telepathic Trauma and i picked Hallucinations for my wild card just because it seemed to fit so well with the others. You can probably tell by those prompts this is going to be dark, but it does have a hopeful/comforting ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's Play For A While

It all happens in the blink of an eye. One second he’s onstage, playing the notes he knows by heart; the next, he’s hunting and killing and tasting warm, human blood. It’s only a flash, but that flash captures eternity. He sees it all. He lives it all. The look of fear in the eyes of his victim excites him. The hammering of a heart ready to burst from terror makes him hard.

Then it’s over. No gradual fade back to reality. He’s standing in front of an audience, missing his cues as his fingers fumble to find their place. He can still see the carnage in his mind, and his stomach is two seconds away from emptying itself all over the stage. 

He makes it to a spot he hopes is away from the prying eyes of the people who paid to be entertained, but just barely, puking his fucking guts out behind the drum kit before he passes out.

~*~

This time, the world does come back slowly, starting out as a pixelated grid, too distorted to make out shapes, too bright to see colors. Sterile and white and blank, he drifts for a while. Probably no more than a few seconds, but it gives him time to focus.

Unfortunately, it gives him time to remember, too. Disjointed bits and pieces flash through his mind. He was someone different during that time, or maybe some _thing_ different. He doesn’t see himself stalking someone and attacking them as much as he sees what he saw while he did those things. 

And even though he knows he didn’t do them, he’s sure he did. 

The white noise in his ears is starting to separate into voices. “I think he’s waking up.” That’s Adam. Of course Adam would be right there, making sure everything’s all right. “Are you okay, Tommy?”

He has no fucking clue if he’s okay or not. He sure as hell wasn’t okay on stage, but he hasn’t had a chance to assess his state of being since he passed out. Before he can answer, though, or even try to figure it out, the world turns white and bright again. The brightness flicks past one eye a few times before it moves to his other eye, and that shit is pissing him off, big time. 

Tommy reaches out, trying to brush away whatever the goddamn annoying thing is, only to have someone grab his hand. “Relax and let the paramedic do his job,” he hears Adam say. “You hit your head when you fell. He’s gotta make sure you didn’t hurt anything important.”

He hadn’t noticed before, but now he can feel the tenderness. He must have fallen face first, because his lip’s split, and the leftover taste of blood’s still very much present on his tongue. His stomach turns over in a queasy roll as he finds himself craving the feeling of more of it, buckets of blood washing over him. Rich and red and warm, turning thick and tacky as the air hits it - it’s all he wants right now, but that wanting is what’s making him feel sick. It’s so far from who his is, who he’s always been, that he can’t recognize any part of himself in it. 

Tommy can feel the pull of carnage trying to tilt his world back to that strange vision he’d had onstage, and it scares the shit right out of him. It’s confusing and distracting, and he needs to get away from it. He needs to get away from everything and everyone. He has to find a way to sort out what’s happening in his head, and he can’t do it with people in his face and his space. 

When he tries to sit up, though, Adam isn’t the only one holding him back. The paramedic is right there, and so is a big, burly security guard. They seem to think he’s disoriented, and maybe he is, but it’s not from any damn bump on his head.

He's having more than just a little trouble thinking of his vision as just a vision. Trying to convince himself that what he saw was just some stray bit of nightmare caught in the synapses of his brain matter is what’s confusing him. It’s confusing because he knows it was real. Somehow, somewhere, in some world, it really happened, and he was a part of it.

He has to find a way to make them all see that they have to let him go sort this shit out. They have to give him time and solitude and a quiet place to think. He pushes against them, feeling his world trying to tip and shift back into the place where he was strong enough to do what he wanted, where he was god-like in his power and abilities. 

Tommy sees a small spark in the eyes of those around him, a tiny flash of fear and recognition. It excites him, starts fires burning deep within. It wakes a dark and terrible hunger that he doesn’t understand. He’s spent his whole life being the one to placate, to soothe and smooth the rough edges of everyone’s lives. 

Now he wants to rip them apart.

Tommy can tell he put everyone on edge with that little bit of otherness that slipped out. The security guard doesn’t trust him, and the paramedic doesn’t trust that he didn’t scramble something in his brain.

But it’s Adam’s reaction that bothers Tommy. Adam’s face is full of anxiety and worry and questions, and they’re all for him. Tommy’s afraid of the answers to those questions, though. He’s afraid that the answers might push Adam right out of his life, sending him running so far and so fast that Tommy will never see him again.

Despite how much he protests, telling everyone that he’ll be fine as soon as he has a chance to think, he’s outnumbered and overpowered. He ends up strapped to a gurney and loaded into an ambulance, while fans snap off shot after shot of him. He knows they’re gonna end up all over twitter and instagram and whatever other social media sites they use. 

He can hear them whispering. They think they’re being quiet, talking in their little groups of two or three or five, but he can hear every single word. The fact that they have the impudence to whisper and talk about him infuriates him, and the cameras flash faster, capturing his rage for the world. 

Adam stays by his side through it all. Some part of Tommy that still wants to hide in the shadows wishes he would leave. Adam’s big and bright and larger than life and always draws attention. Instead, he holds Tommy’s hand as long as they let him, telling him that everything will be all right, and Tommy starts to believe him. 

Adam doesn’t leave him until they get to the hospital. Medical type people take Tommy back to be poked and prodded and scanned and tested, while clerical type people ask Adam all the questions that need to be answered for insurance. It’s always about the insurance; the bottom line always wins out, after all.

They do ask Tommy some questions, too. Nonsensical things, like what day it is and if he knows who he is. He fucking well knows who he is, just maybe not what he is. He felt like a monster before - some kind of creature or predator - but that feeling started slipping away when Adam was holding his hand and refused to let go until they physically made him. That contact, the rightness and warmth, gave Tommy something to anchor to, to be able to hold onto and use to pull himself back, but that’s what Adam’s always done for him. 

When they can’t think of one more test left untested, they decide to keep him overnight, just for observation. Tommy really wants nothing more than to go home, but Adam insists that staying at the hospital is necessary, and Adam always finds a way to get his way, at least when it comes to Tommy. Seems like that works with the hospital staff, too, because Adam manages to convince everyone that he needs to stay with Tommy all night. Visiting hours don’t hold power over someone like him. 

They send doctors in to talk to Tommy, still baffled as to what might have caused his blackout. That’s what they’re calling it - a blackout. He told them all that he couldn’t remember anything. He’s not fucking crazy, but he knows they’d think he was if he told them that he lived a thousand lifetimes in those few seconds. The only way to get them off his case is to keep telling them nothing. 

Adam stays with him through all the questions and listens, nodding his head when he thinks it’s appropriate, never letting go of Tommy’s hand. Tommy holds it tight, feeling the memories fade into the strength he feels Adam sharing with him through the contact. 

Afterward, they sit, staring at TV shows neither pay attention to until the lights in the hall dim and the noises are no more than the whisper of the nurses’ crepe soles carrying them to their duties. Tommy can almost convince himself that it was all some type of mental fugue that he went through, except he can still feel a little of the beast inside. 

He can smell blood and meat all around him and feel heartbeats both strong and weak. They prickle at the other world, the other life he lived or contacted or connected with, trying to tease it back into being. 

Tommy tries to tell Adam some of it. He leaves out the goriest parts. Those parts gross the hell out of him, even though he still craves that ultimate power and destruction, and he doesn’t want to take a chance on pushing Adam away. 

He does tell Adam that he’s scared, afraid that whatever it was will come back and he won’t be able to fight it on his own. Tommy tries to explain that it was darkness that engulfed him, but that he became the darkness, and it brought incredible clarity. It brought strength and power and dominion over all other living beings, lesser beings, and that feeling aroused him. If it had lasted longer, he knows he would have gotten off on it. 

Adam lets him say all that he has to say. Once the dam breaks, Tommy’s surprised at how much he needs to talk about it. The words push and stumble and flow, and the quiet hours of the night pass with tales of stalking and hunting and shadows, of the thrill of the kill and the satisfaction of feeding. 

Adam listens to it all, taking it in without judgement, holding tightly to Tommy’s hand. There’s a mightiness in that contact, something with more force than the otherness that tried to claim him. The touch of Adam’s hand is enough to shield him from the monster who tried to live in his brain before, the monster that might be part of him. 

Adam hugs him then, holding him tight as he promises to always be there to help Tommy fight the darkness. It’s enough for now. It has to be enough, because there’s nothing else they can do. They spend the rest of the night that way, quietly watching the night fade from the world as it wakes. The warm rose and purple of the dawn sky give Tommy hope that the nightmare world is gone for good, but whether it is or not, he thinks he can fight it with Adam’s help.


End file.
